OAXACA, MEXICO.- Mexican painter joined the Organization for the Defense of the Natural and Cultural Patrimony of Oaxaca to avoid the installation of the McDonald’s chain of hamburgers in the historic center nof the city Oaxaca, Mexico. Francisco Toledo With this, he returns to activism cultural after more than one year of being dedicated to his painting. Together with the members of the group, as well as Carlos Monsiváis and Elisa Ramírez, Toledo heads this new cause for which signs have been made against the "Mc Center" and a protest at the city center is scheduled for today. A letter directed to the authorities and the civil society signed by artists, intellectuals and restauranteurs from Oaxaca they affirmed that McDonald’ s is an company imperialist. Among others points of aversion against McDonald’s they assure that the transnational company "contributes" to the destruction of the rain forest of Mexico and of Latin America to raise cheap cattle.
Francisco Toledo (b 1941) was born in Juchitan, Oaxaca, México. He studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Oaxaca and the Centro Superior de Artes Aplicadas del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico, where he studied graphic arts with Guillermo Silva Santamaria. In 1960 he moved to Paris from where he traveled through Europe. In 1965 when he returned to Mexico, he started to promote and protect the arts and crafts in his native state of Oaxaca; he designed tapestries with the craftsmen of Teotitlán del Valle, and in 1988 he created the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO).
His social and cultural concerns about his native state led to his participation in the establishment of an important art library at the AIGO, and his involvement in the founding of the Museum de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), the Patronato Pro-Defensa y Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural de Oaxaca, a library for the blind, a photographic center, and the Eduardo Mata Music Library to name a few of his projects. Toledo’s outstanding creativity has been expressed in pottery, sculpture, weaving, graphic arts, and paintings. He has had exhibitions in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Belgium, France, Japan, Sweden, the United States, as well as other countries. Toledo is simultaneously an exceptional artist and a patron and guardian of the arts and the crafts of his state of Oaxaca.
